iHeartMedia, Inc. (IHRT): Hedge Fund Sentiment Unchanged

The 800+ hedge funds and famous money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the second quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of September 30th. We went through these filings, fixed typos and other more significant errors and identified the changes in hedge fund portfolios. Our extensive review of these public filings is finally over, so this article is set to reveal the smart money sentiment towards iHeartMedia, Inc. (NASDAQ:IHRT).

Hedge fund interest in iHeartMedia, Inc. (NASDAQ:IHRT) shares was flat at the end of last quarter. This is usually a negative indicator. Our calculations also showed that IHRT isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings). At the end of this article we will also compare IHRT to other stocks including FirstCash, Inc. (NASDAQ:FCFS), Enable Midstream Partners LP (NYSE:ENBL), and Clearway Energy, Inc. (NYSE:CWEN) to get a better sense of its popularity.

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. Keeping this in mind let’s take a gander at the latest hedge fund action encompassing iHeartMedia, Inc. (NASDAQ:IHRT).

Do Hedge Funds Think IHRT Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2021, a total of 28 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 0% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards IHRT over the last 25 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

More specifically, Silver Point Capital was the largest shareholder of iHeartMedia, Inc. (NASDAQ:IHRT), with a stake worth $254.5 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Silver Point Capital was Senator Investment Group, which amassed a stake valued at $66.7 million. D E Shaw, Sculptor Capital, and Contrarius Investment Management were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Silver Point Capital allocated the biggest weight to iHeartMedia, Inc. (NASDAQ:IHRT), around 12.1% of its 13F portfolio. Six Columns Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 8.47 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to IHRT.

Due to the fact that iHeartMedia, Inc. (NASDAQ:IHRT) has faced falling interest from hedge fund managers, logic holds that there is a sect of hedge funds that slashed their entire stakes heading into Q4. At the top of the heap, Felix Wai’s Zeno Research sold off the largest stake of all the hedgies monitored by Insider Monkey, comprising close to $2.9 million in stock, and Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management was right behind this move, as the fund sold off about $2.1 million worth. These moves are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to iHeartMedia, Inc. (NASDAQ:IHRT). These stocks are FirstCash, Inc. (NASDAQ:FCFS), Enable Midstream Partners LP (NYSE:ENBL), Clearway Energy, Inc. (NYSE:CWEN), Denbury Inc. (NYSE:DEN), PagerDuty, Inc. (NYSE:PD), Allegiant Travel Company (NASDAQ:ALGT), and Methanex Corporation (NASDAQ:MEOH). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to IHRT’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 19.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $341 million. That figure was $618 million in IHRT’s case. PagerDuty, Inc. (NYSE:PD) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Enable Midstream Partners LP (NYSE:ENBL) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. iHeartMedia, Inc. (NASDAQ:IHRT) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for IHRT is 78.6. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 31.1% in 2021 through December 9th and beat the market again by 5.1 percentage points. Unfortunately IHRT wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on IHRT were disappointed as the stock returned -20.9% since the end of September (through 12/9) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.